Sick House or Hypochondria? Careful with that answer!

Two days after my negative beta came in I had a twinge of TMJ...and then late that night my fever kicked in. For a couple days I hovered at 101 or thereabouts, literally sweating through my pajamas every night. (Digressing: Yes, I wear pajamas. Sexy? Not. But when we first moved into this new house, it was freezing-assed cold and our mattress was on the floor - I swear that the cold from the crawl space below came up and infiltrated our bed each night - it was near to unbearable...we even put my heating pad under the covers at the foot of the bed so that our feet wouldn't freeze. My box spring was in LA awaiting transport to Los Gatos and so we lived like this for nearly a month. Ugh. And yes, all of this makes me wonder if the cold condition of our bed was a reason why our embies didn't stick...but hell, I'm sure people in upstate NY conceive, so let's banish that thought. Back to the story).

So this stupid fever was accompanied by the weirdest sinus headache - every soft spot in my skull ached, and at the same time it felt like my head was going to implode if I so much as sneezed. If you've read my previous posts, the ENT didn't find anything remarkable, put me on allegra-d and nosespray with steroids, and after about 10 days most of the symptoms passed.

Last weekend we moved my mom from LA to our house which means that she's been here maybe 9 or 10 days now. Just yesterday she complained of being conjested and asked me to run to the drug store for some decongestants. And now this morning, she tells me that she woke up with drenched pajamas just like I did. Okay, so that sounds like a fever or too many blankets. Now the most obvious explanation is that she "caught my cold", but I was no longer contagious by the time we hit LA last weekend. So scratch her catching anything from me that might have been communicable.

So I posed to "J" the possibility that we've got a "sick house". God knows we've got roof rats in this 1960's era house, the attic has rat shit all over the insulation (lovely, yes?), and we know that there was a tenant in here that let the place go. I heard from the last tenants that there was debris EVERYWHERE. Inside and out. Ick. (Digression #2: What possesses people to be such slobs, and especially with another person's house? Well the owner came in and fixed most things back up and we're the second tenant since then.)

The house doesn't look bad these days but there are vestiges of "issues" that we've had to clean/deal with. We've had our share of odd smells emanating from the heater vents, mildew and other growing things in the bathroom, a neighbor that had their gray water pipes pointed at our bedrooms, mosquitos in the house in the dead of winter (where the hell are they coming from?), etcetera. So why would "J" so easily dismiss the idea that our house might indeed have some sort of environmental issues, and why am I blogging about this?

Well J and TV both seem to enjoy pooh-poohing any complaint I might have about the condition of my health. If I make suggestions about their own health conditions, well they listen, sometimes attentively, but they don't make hypochondriac jokes about my suggestions. If I have a sniffle, TV will say something like, "Oh maybe you've got some sort of plague". And here's the thread from J and my IM conversation this morning:

Linda: my mom had a fever last night. woke up in a sweat like i was doing. i wonder if this house is toxic?
Linda: she's all congested..runny nose..
J: think hard enough and it will be

What the fuck? Think hard enough and the house will have an environmental condition? That's madness. Fucked up thinking. Sorry J, but it IS.

If I dare so much as to say I have a headache or feel a bit feverish, both are quick to point out that "it might be all in your head" or "it might be caused from stress". I'm not one to callously discard the power of the mind on the human body, but why is it that when I am feeling like shit that the "mind" is the first place that both of them look. It feels simultaneously patronizing and condescending.

I sometimes really think that because I was "this close" to actually becoming a doctor (I applied to 22 medical schools and was rejected across the board...this is a story that really pisses me off...but that is another rant for another day) that maybe it somehow makes them feel that because they can't converse as deeply about medicine that they instead have to ridicule me. It's a common psychological tactic when one feels "less than". Or maybe I'm just a frustrated doctor wanna be and they think I'm looking for a syndrome in every symptom. I'll admit that after a year of Microbiology you'd be bleaching the hell out of everything in sight, too! But for J and TV to continually mock any comment I have about my physical well being is just infuriating.

So I'll go and cough up a wad of chest mucous that derives, in their opinion, from some place "in my head". Maybe I should save it in a glass, for their professional inspection, just so they can reaffirm that it was created not by a virus or bacteria but by mere thought. Yeah, that's it. Honestly: times like this I want to go and return to my shitty paying lab job just so I can surround myself with like-minded individuals that deal with reality, not thought.